Surprises
by Nevvarchive
Summary: A random guy finds himself in a strange world with even stranger people. Rated T for language.
1. Lovely View

The first thing I observed was how pretty the scene was.

The sun rising over the mountains, the first rays of light breaking onto the landscape. The small, scattered islands covering the ocean, dotted with sugar canes… or reeds… or bamboo… or papyrus, or _something_.

Chickens, cows, sheep and pigs wandered the land, occasionally falling in the water and just staying there, bobbing up and down. Ha. Stupid.

My senses started to come to me, and I realized how odd everything looked, too.

Everything was made out of squares. Even the animals. They were all blocky and mechanical, moving like a wooden puppet, almost. The islands were lumpy and uneven, and the… water-dwelling plant… was… what would you call it… _pixellated_?

I looked down and saw myself the same way. I was all blocky, and moved like the animals did. Like a puppet.

And then I realized I had no idea where I was, or who I was. And that it wasn't morning. The sun wasn't rising. It was falling.

Night descended… and a hand came out of the ground.


	2. Neighbors

Man, I screamed like a girl.

No rational person could blame me, I was running for my life from a zombie, a HUGE spider, and a walking skeleton!

An arrow flew past me, barely grazing my arm, and embedded itself in a tree.

A walking skeleton with a freakin bow.

I was going to die.

I ran into something smushy. And slimy. I looked up and it was the creepiest thing I had ever seen. It didn't really look humanoid, more like a mutant. It was bright green and had four stubby legs, and a gaping frown underneath its dull black eyes.

Did I hear something sizzling?

_BOOM!_

It EXPLODED.

What the heck is wrong with this place?

I flew backwards and hit my head on a tree. OW. Groaning, I sat up and saw that the explosion had killed everything else chasing me. I also saw many more zombies, spiders, skeletons and exploding mutants everywhere around me. Luckily, I think they all had terrible eyesight.

I barely noticed the sun rising over the mountains far on the horizon. I was focusing on climbing up the tree and into safety.

But then, as it got moderately bright, the zombies and the skeletons… caught on fire.

What. The. Heck.

They screamed as they burned, and fell to the ground, one by one. They poofed into dust and left behind odd items. Bones, arrows, and feathers. I jumped down and got them, and noticed a gigantic spider RIGHT next to me.

It just stared.

I froze in place, and all it did was stare. Maybe they weren't hostile in the sunlight? Wouldn't be the weirdest thing in this place.

I noticed the exploding mutants were still roaming the islands. Too bad they didn't burn. I jumped as another exploded way off.

_BOOM._

"FRACKIN CREEPER!"

There was a voice! A human voice. It wasn't mine, I was sure. But I wasn't sure that I didn't imagine it. Either way, I ran towards the sound.

There was someone there!... Someone who looked exactly. Like. Me.

Except they were wearing luminous bright blue armor.

They looked at me and raised a pixellated eyebrow.

We stood there for a while.

"Who are you?" I spoke up.

"Better question is, who are you?" He shot back. Even his _voice _sounded like mine!

"I don't know. Who are you?" I said.

"I'm Sawyer. Are you Talis?" He asked.

"Who's Talis?"

"He's a friend of mine."

"Is he here?"

"No, he doesn't play."

"Doesn't play what?"

He sighed and pressed a hand to his face. "This isn't a roleplaying server, dude."

"What's roleplaying? And what's a server?" I asked, _really _confused.

"STFU. Noob." He walked off.

"What's STFU? What's a noob?" I asked, Sawyer didn't answer. He just kept walking.

"Wait!" I yelled, running after him. He stopped and turned around.

"WHAT do you WANT? I'm not going to give you any diamonds or anything! So GTFO."

"Uh… what? Diamonds? ANYWAY, I woke up here, and I have no idea what this place is or what the things here are! What the heck is going on here?" I yelled.

He seemed utterly unimpressed. "I already told you. This isn't a roleplaying ser-" He was cut off by a HUGE explosion about fifty yards behind him. Debris flew everywhere, and I saw _another_ guy who looked exactly like me run out of the fire.

"Sawyer, you bitch! I told you to not freaking blow up my base! You ass-fucker!"

I flinched. I didn't like swearing.

"Hey, you took my whole stack of diamonds! So I took your whole stack of TNT and put it to use for you. :)" He said. Wait, he _said_ the last part? I wasn't sure, but I know I _knew _that he inserted a smiley face at the end _somehow_. "By the way, you're on fire."

"SHIT!" He ran to a cliff conveniently beside them and dived feet first into the water.

"Mike!" Sawyer called down the cliff.

"WHAT?" Mike shouted back.

Sawyer smiled. "Creeper."

"AW, SON OF A-"

_BOOM!_

Apparently the exploding mutants were" creepers".

"Oh my god!" I shouted. Mike's body floated on the surface of the water for a moment, then poofed, like the skeletons and zombies who caught on fire did. "He's dead!"

"He deserved it!" Sawyer laughed, busting a gut. "He's a fuckin griefer!"

"Griefer…?" I asked, but suddenly Mike appeared right in front of me. I shouted wordlessly and jumped back.

"I HAD A DIAMOND PICKAXE ON ME! You're going to pay for this, bitch!" With that, Mike jumped back down the cliff and into the water.

"What… the… HELL?" I screamed.

Sawyer was still laughing. "You acting all clueless is sort of hilarious. Heck, I won't kick you off the server, whoever you are. You can roleplay all you want."

"What the hell is going on here?" I demanded.

"Come on, lighten up! Have a little fun! _It's just a game_," He said, and, with that, he ran off, waving a diamond sword around at a Creeper.

Who the _heck_ are these people?


	3. Q&A

Sawyer talked a lot. About what, I wasn't very sure.

Lots of things I'd never heard of, TNT, griefers, servers, some sport called Spleef, and about some girl called Felicity. Every single sentence had at least one offensive word that nearly made me flinch in it.

He talked _a lot_ about his "base".

"It's really HUGE! Almost _too _fuckin big. Floatin in the sky, too. I really need to light underneath it, zombies and shit can live under it in the daytime. Pretty fuckin awesome."

"_Does _sound pretty big. Trying to over-compensate for something?" I couldn't help myself.

He glared at me.

_Geez, if looks could kill._

Mike came back, decked out in the same armor Sawyer had. I could barely tell the two apart. Mike was holding a tiny block of red sticks bound together, covered in a white tape with the letters "TNT" on it.

"PAYBACK, MOFO!"

So quick I could barely track him with my eyes, he placed a seeming never-ending supply of larger blocks resembling the thing in his hand all around Sawyer, even adding a ceiling, making an inescapable house. I backed away.

"What's all that?" I asked.

"TNT, noob. You should get some one of these days." Then he punched one of the TNT blocks and ran. Like. Heck. I followed.

"MIKE, YOU BAS-"

_BOOM!_

So many explosions!

Well, Sawyer was dead. I looked back and saw all of his stuff scattered in a crater where he once stood.

_Ooooh… Shiny!_

I couldn't help myself but to pick up his bright blue sword. I swung it around a few times, "accidentally" decapitating a nearby chicken. It poofed and dropped a feather. I picked it up and admired the sword.

"Hey, you!" I turned around. Sawyer was back. "What's your name?"

"I don't know." I said. Honestly, I didn't!

Sawyer sighed. "Fine. Your username's Dedrith, I'll just call you that. Anyway, Dedrith… GIVE ME MY FUCKING SWORD BACK MOFO."

I threw his sword into the ground hastily, and backed away. He grabbed it and brandished it at me.

"No one likes a noob. Stay away from my stuff."

"But… but it's… so shiny…"

He laughed. "Lol… you play the part well. You should really do some serious roleplay, like, on a roleplay server."

"….Lol?" I asked.

"What are you laughin at?" He questioned back.

"I wasn't laughing! What's lol?" I asked innocently.

"Face. Palm. Don't pretend to be a _complete _idiot, dude. It gets pretty annoying." With that, he walked off.

"Wha?" I muttered, completely confused. But then I ran after Sawyer again. I still had a few questions.

"Hey! Could you help me? I need somewhere to stay." I asked him.

"I'm not letting your ass in my base!" He said, looking back. "Make your own."

"How?" I asked.

"Go punch a tree," He said, laughing quietly, and hesitated, then jumped forward, and disappeared in a hole in the ground.

* * *

_**For the record, I'm a girl. But in this story, I'm a guy. If that makes sense.  
**_


	4. Punching Trees

_Go punch a tree?_

I doubted that would have any positive effect.

But, I did what Sawyer said… mainly because I had no idea where him and Mike where now, and I didn't want to _die _every night.

So, I walked up to a blocky, pixilated tree, and punched it.

They were amazingly weak!

The wood came off in, surprise surprise, blocks. I punched the whole tree into collectible pieces, and the leaves started disappearing. A sapling, it looked like, fell next to me, so I planted it in the spot where the tree once stood.

Then I stood there with a pile of wood, no clue what to do next, and feeling like a complete idiot.

Something clicked in my mind.

_Wood=Planks._

I focused and all the wood turned into four times the amount of wooden planks.

"Wha…?"

I wasn't going to question it further.

Something clicked again. _Four planks=Workbench._

A workbench appeared when four wood planks disappeared.

_Two planks=stick._

_Two sticks+three planks=Pickaxe._

_Two sticks+one plank=shovel._

I was starting to get the hang of this.

I made a 4x4x4 cabin of sorts out of planks, with a two-high one square doorway.

_Six planks=Door._

I put the door in the space.

It was incredibly dark in the cabin, except for the light coming through the tiny windows in the door. I went out and looked around for some form of light for my house.

_Eight cobblestone=Furnace._

Cobblestone?

I saw a hill with exposed rock not too far off.

_Rock=cobblestone…?_

I headed towards it with my pickaxe in hand.

I went a little crazy with mining, taking out huge chunks of rock, never stopping until my pickaxe broke.

I noticed the sun setting.

_Crap._

I ran back to my makeshift cabin, wondering how the heck I was going to keep it lit.

_Working furnace=light._

That absent thought process was coming in handy.

I quickly made a furnace out of the cobblestone I gathered and stuck wood in it, not caring what it would make, just hoping it would give me enough light to see.

It did!

It lit up nearly my whole cabin, and even spilled out through the windows of my door onto the dimming grass outside.

Night descended, and I jumped each time I heard a snarl, a clatter of bones, or even the squeak of spiders, despite being safe in a small, cozy cabin.

_BOOM._

I jumped at that, too.

Was that a creeper or TNT?

"DIE, BITCH!"

Creeper, then. Wait… no, it could still be TNT.

It sounded like Sawyer. Or Mike. Or me… heck, we all sounded alike. It sounded like _someone._

Whoever it was burst through my door, not even bothering to close it.

I screamed as I saw a zombie lumbering towards the open doorway and immediately slammed it shut.

"Lol, Dedrith, calm the fuck down! Just a zombie."

"Uh… Sawyer?" I asked, still confused as to who it was.

"ROFL, yeah, I'm totally that sniveling asswipe."

"Hey, Mike…" I said half-heartedly, not even bothering to ask about his strange words.

"Fail! You only have a fucking furnace? Not even any torches?" He laughed mockingly.

The word "torch" triggered a thought.

_Stick+coal or charcoal=4 torches._

Coal? Charcoal? Where could I find that?

I vaguely knew what charcoal was. It was burnt wood.

Burnt wood…

I opened my furnace and took out the nice stack of 5 charcoal that had accumulated so far.

"Seriously? You're using fucking charcoal? Man… newb…"

I ignored mike, making sticks and then as many torches as I could, and stuck four in my cabin, one on each side. Now it was brightly lit. Almost too bright. Without thinking, I punched a hole in the wood of my cabin.

It was day.

"About f-"

"YOU USE THAT WORD TOO MUCH!" I shouted, unable to contain myself. No one needed to swear _that much._

"… freakin time." He finished.

"… Oh." I stood there awkwardly, and then ran out to see the daylight.

I nearly danced in joy when the sunlight hit me. It felt so warm and nice. I decided I _hated _night.

_SSSssssss!_

Again with the sizzling?

_BOOM!_

CRAP!

Darkness fell as my senses faded away… and I decided I hated mornings, too.

* * *

_**BTW, I do play on an online server. And the people in this story represent the people on the server (except for the main character, they're totally made up). And yes, they do act like that. And they're annoying as heck. But hilarious enough to not punch in the face. And some of the things the main character's said in here, I've actually said to them. Including the "overcompensating" thing. X3  
**_

_**But my username isn't Dedrith.  
**_


	5. Grief

"_Owwww…"_

My head hurt like _heck._

I sat up and looked around.

I was at the spot where I first saw Sawyer.

"What the…?"

Then it hit me.

_I'm alive!_

I got up, and looked at the sun. If what I knew about directions was correct, it was still morning.

Then I noticed all my items were gone.

_Crap._

I saw my cabin through the trees in one direction and ran towards it. There was a crater in the dirt right in front of the doorway, with my stuff lying in it.

I ran forward and picked everything up.

"You don't just fuckin run out like that," Mike said, exiting my house as I started filling up the unsightly crater with dirt.

"You don't just enter people's houses like that," I shot back, irritated by the dull pain in my head.

"Psh, you can barely call that pile of shit a house."

"It's all I have," I said sadly.

Strangely enough, he burst out laughing, and walked off into the forest.

_Well… that was odd._

Anyway… I had a house, I had tools. I could survive as long as I was careful.

What to do now…?

_Mine._

The answer came instantly.

I created more pickaxes, this time out of cobblestone. I had four when I was done.

_Seven sticks=ladder._

I made about 12 of those, with the help of a few more trees cut down (and replanted).

I dug a downward shaft inside my house, lining one side with ladders so I could get back up. Once the dirt gave way to rock, I widened it out into a three by three horizontal tunnel going downwards every "block".

I mined for hours, probably even well into the night. I found lots of coal and about a dozen of what I thought was iron. I even found three blocks of this red stone that glowed when I touched it and dropped a few things of powder when destroyed.

When my last pick broke, I went back up into my cabin and saw it _was _night. I couldn't see the moon from the tiny windows on the door so I couldn't see how close to morning it was, but I figured it was at least after midnight.

I decided I didn't want to lose my things if I died again. How could I save them?

_Eight wooden planks=Chest._

A chest? Storage! _That _was a good idea.

I made one and found it was incredibly small. It could only hold as much as I could. Nevertheless, I put all my valuables (including the glowing red dust) and a fourth of my simple essentials like coal and wood in the chest.

I held the iron in my hand and wondered how to make it useable.

_Iron block in furnace=Iron ingot._

I put it in the furnace with some coal and, while I waited for it to smelt, looked outside.

It was morning.

Exhaustion came over me. I never thought about it before but it had been _days_ since I had slept. I needed a bed.

_Three wooden planks+three wool=Bed._

Wool…?

I heard a faint _baa_ in the distance and remembered wandering sheep I had seen.

I went outside, making sure to look around for nearby creepers, and, seeing there were none, looked around for sheep. I saw one behind a tree not too far from my cabin, and headed towards it.

I stopped at the sheep. It was staring at me. I wondered how to shear it. I didn't have any shears or anything…

_Punch it._

Well… That was a dark thought.

It made sense, though. In this simple world of "punching trees".

I punched it, and the wool came off in blocks.

I made the bed, put it in a corner of my house, and checked back on my iron, which was all smelted. I made a superb pickaxe with it and put it in my chest. By then it was night, so I got some well deserved rest.

I woke up to my cabin flooded with water.

"GAH!" I jumped, upsetting my floating bed, and fell off into the shockingly cold water. I was instantly awake, and swam over to my door.

I opened it and the water poured out, and kept coming! I landed on the dirt on my belly like a fish out of water, and slowly sat up, looking around. High above my base was a floating block of water suspended in midair, flowing into a hole in the top of my base, seemingly never-ending.

"What the…?" I muttered, eyes wide.

"MIKE DID IT!"

I jumped at the alarmed voice, and saw Sawyer (or who I supposed was Sawyer) running off into the trees.

"What the heck!" I yelled after him, but didn't give chase, simply because I was still exhausted.

After making a tower of dirt up to the floating water, I caught the very top in a bucket I had made with iron, and the whole thing emptied out. I dug my way back down and re-lit my house with torches (because all my torches had been knocked down by the water) and filled in the hole in my roof with a wooden plank.

I jumped down from my roof and went into my cabin… and ran into a block I didn't place.

I recognized it as TNT.

It wasn't one block in the middle of my house. It _filled_ my house.

"SAWYER!"

"MIKE DID IT!" Was the extremely faint reply from far away.

I knew that if I tried to remove it, it would detonate, and blow up all my hard work and items. I knew that Mike _didn't _do it. I _didn't _know how I was going to get Sawyer back for it, but I knew that I was going to try.

_Five sulphur+four sand=TNT._

_Creeper=sulphur._

_Lava is found underground and can be harvested and re-placed with a bucket. It is extremely dangerous._

_Seven cobblestone+one bow+one redstone=Dispenser._

_Dispensers shoot out items when activated. Arrows loaded into the dispenser are shot like from a bow and do damage._

_Three string+three sticks=Bow._

_Feather+stick+flint=Arrow._

_Redstone dust is used to connect a switch far away to something it can activate._

_Levers, pressure plates, and buttons are switches._

I was shocked that my mind instantly supplied payback methods. But then my eyes narrowed and I grinned maliciously.

_Perfect._


	6. Hunting and Hiding

"_Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap!"_

I tripped over a rise in the dirt as I ran, falling face-first into a rock.

_Ouch._

_BOOM!_

CRAP!

I flew into a tree from the impact of the explosion and had an odd feeling of déjà vu. I was alive, though. My iron armor had absorbed most of the impact and was nearly crumbling at my touch. I'd have to replace it soon.

I looked back at the crater the creeper had made and grumbled when I saw no sulphur. Apparently they didn't drop it when they died by exploding.

I had set out to kill some creepers to get sulphur for TNT with an iron sword, figuring it couldn't be very difficult if Sawyer and Mike just had stacks and stacks of TNT at their disposal. But after I snuck up on a creeper, hit it once, saw it turn around, all slimy and gross, and hiss, I chickened out. And ran. And got blown up.

How was I supposed to kill a kamikaze mutant up close with a sword when it could just explode in my face?

I needed something ranged.

_Three string+three sticks= Bow. _

"I KNEW THAT!" I shouted at nothing in particular.

_Spiders=string._

I didn't know _that, _though, and I could almost swear the thought sounded smug.

Now, _spiders _couldn't explode, heck, they could only bite. That didn't sound too hard. It was day at the moment, but I remembered spiders stayed out in the open in the day, they just wouldn't attack on sight. I looked around and spotted one under a tree and headed towards it, sword in hand.

Spiders were no problem, I got bit a few times but some raw meat I got from "accidentally" decapitating pigs fixed that up. I know, raw meat, yum. But I didn't want to go waste time cooking it when eating it, strangely, wouldn't get me sick. After searching for about half an hour I finally got three pieces of string and headed home quickly because night was coming.

Oh, wait… home was filled with TNT.

_CRAP!_

I looked around frantically for somewhere, anywhere to stay, because night was coming, and quick. After seeing nothing suitable, I finally dug a hole in the ground and filled in the top after putting down a torch.

I had a bit of wood on me, luckily, and made a crafting bench after widening the space a bit. I also made a furnace just for practicality and started smelting more charcoal.

_Sand in furnace= glass._

Well, that was a completely unrelated thought.

Glass… Glass could make windows! That would definitely be useful.

I took out the wood and the measly bit that had been smelted and stuck in two sand blocks because that was all I had. I wasn't exactly near a beach or anything.

Well, technically I was, but it was down a cliff. And I never really felt a need to go down there, because, you know, I wasn't _suicidal_!

The flames in the furnace dimmed as I thought this and I took out the glass, smiling when I saw it was see-through.

I deleted one block on top of me.

"GAH!"

There was a zombie staring down at me. He let out a high-pitched snarl and started reaching through the hole. I shoved the glass in there and he kept staring at me. I backed up and sat down, looking at the floor to not see his ugly, rotting face.

I didn't have any wool to make another bed, so I just dozed off on the floor.

I woke up to someone staring at my face.

"HAVEN'T YOU EVER HEARD OF KNOCKING?" I screamed, flinching backwards into the wall. The guy burst into laughter.

"There's no door, fucktard!"

"CAN'T YOU GUYS LEAVE ME ALONE FOR TWO MEASLY DAYS?" I screamed.

"Woah, Dedrith, calm fucking down! It's just fun messing with you, that's all!" He said, still laughing.

"Get out!"

"Fine, fine! Geez, shoot the messenger, why don't ya?" He said, climbing out of the hole in my ceiling he had made.

"That doesn't even make sense! In _what way _are you a messenger?"

He thought for a moment. "Yeah, that made no fucking sense. It made dollars," He laughed.

"You're lame."

"And you're a bitch," He said quickly, then walked away casually.

Wait… who was that?

"Does it matter?" I asked myself quietly.

_No, it doesn't._ They're _all_ freaking lunatics!

_SSSsss…_

Crap. I sighed and ran off, avoiding the worst of the explosion but still getting hit. There went my workbench and furnace. And glass. And armor.

Eh, they were all replaceable.

Every living thing here's pretty crazy. Heck, this whole world is crazy!

I shoved that thought away and went to go get some arrows.

* * *

**_Thanks for all the awesome reviews. Sorry this chapter took so long, I wasn't feeling like writing for a while. _**


	7. Handouts

I reached my old house, just to use it as a reference to where my new base would be. Well, not exactly base, I just needed a place to put a chest for now.

I looked around and decided the rocky rise to the left of the house would be a good spot. I walked over to it, pulled out a pickaxe, mined a 2 by 2 by 1 hole, and put a chest I had made earlier into it. I didn't exactly need a castle right now, just a relatively safe place to put my stuff.

I went back to the cabin and dug underneath all the TNT, thanking god that, apparently, the explosives could float. I reached my chest and punched out the bottom part and got all of my stuff. There wasn't much of value, but it was better than going and finding it all again.

I got away from my house in case it happened to randomly explode and counted my materials that I needed in arrows. I had plenty of sticks, and could make more easily. I had about fifteen flint because of a large gravel vein I ran into while mining. I only had two feathers, though.

_Let's see… I get feathers from chickens, and zombies._

_Why would zombies drop feathers?_

I ignored that thought and, after putting most of my stuff into the new chest, looked around for any feathers on the ground. It was still morning, so all of the zombies had burned to death just moments earlier, and there were bound to be some feathers lying around.

I eventually got 6 more feathers with the help of some chickens I wandered across, and went back to my chest. I hollowed out a basic 4 by 5 room inside of the rock with a doorway, put a torch in it, moved the chest inside, made a workbench, put a door in place, and made a bow and 32 arrows. It would probably be enough to last me a while.

I heard a voice outside. It sounded like, "And I thought Sawyer was joking…"

I opened the door and looked out to see someone looking through the doorway of my old house. He walked towards it and held out his hand.

"No, wait, don't!" I yelled.

He punched it and ran towards the trees. The TNT glowed white and exploded, causing all the other TNT to follow and make a never-ending earsplitting _BOOM!_

The explosives flew everywhere, one landed right in front of me and blew a hole in my new shelter.

The noise eased down and after the last TNT exploded, all that was left of my house was a giant crater in the ground, and a few smaller ones scattered everywhere.

The guy who blew it up walked to the crater and looked into it. Then he looked towards me. "Hey, you got any pork chops?"

My jaw hung open. "WHY THE HECK DID YOU DO THAT?" I yelled.

"Well, it wasn't going to fix itself, and it's not like anyone could live in it." He reasoned.

_He hasn't cussed yet, so he's not Sawyer or Mike._

"B… but it… I…" I couldn't come up with a comeback. It just made me depressed that all my hard work was ruined.

He stared at me for a moment. "So… yeah. Got any pork chops?"

"NO, I DON'T HAVE ANY PORK CHOPS!" I yelled."Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm Erby. Well, really, I'm Jacob, but people call me Erby." He looked around. "Can I have some armor? Mine died in the explosion and-"

"Look," I said. "I don't have _anything _of value, and if I did, I'm pretty sure I would've been the one to find it, so why would I give it to _anyone _else?"

"Geez, it's just some armor. No need to get all worked up."

"Well, guess what? My armor died in an explosion, too. And if I had any, I would be wearing it, right? It's pretty easy to go kill some cows or mine some iron, so why don't you work for yourself instead of asking for handouts when other people need stuff too?" I saw the sun setting in the distance and slammed my door. Then I realized my door was the only thing standing in the front wall, and filled up the holes with dirt. I made a bed with wool I got from a sheep that died in the explosion and went to sleep.


	8. Discovery

_14 sulphur, _I counted. _Enough to make two TNT blocks._

… _Great._

I was out of arrows and had just spent _hours _tracking down and killing exploding mutants for _two _TNT blocks.

Great.

How the heck did Sawyer and Mike get all that TNT, then? _There must be something I'm missing._

I sighed and shoved the TNT in my pocket. _It'll be enough for now. _I grinned and opened the door to my makeshift base. _Now to find Sawyer's floating castle in the sky._

I looked around. I never had seen it. I had absolutely no idea where it was. Though I remembered Sawyer heading east last time I saw him. Maybe that's where his base was.

I climbed up the little hill that was east of me, narrowly avoiding falling into a pitch-black cave with a one square opening in the ceiling. I finally reached the top and looked, for the first time, at the other side of the hill.

"Holy crap," I muttered.

An _endless _desert stretched in front of me, spreading for miles on every side. There was a giant golden cup to my left with redstone block studs and water pouring into it from above. Off in the distance I could just make out a double rainbow constructed of colored wool. To my right there was a tower made of a dark purple rock with a ledge at the top. A sign next to the door said 'archer tower'. A ways behind the giant golden cup there was a wall of glass with a pool of water next to it. I walked up to it and saw that, underneath the water, there was a floor of glass and lava underneath that. A sign next to the glass wall said 'hot tub'.

In the middle of it all, there was a four-block wide road made of what I believed was sandstone that led _wayyy_ off into the distance.

To the west a ways, there was a random lake that looked like it had some gravity troubles. Some of the water was floating one or two blocks above the others, and, at one part, the floor of the lake rose up and formed a very odd floating platform of sand.

I headed over to investigate, because I was _sure _sand was one of the few things here that couldn't float.

I jumped into the water and climbed up onto the platform. Looking around it, I still couldn't make sense of how it was floating, unless there was some invisible force holding it up. I reached forward to punch it.

"You make it fall, I kill you."

I turned around. A person stood at the edge of the lake, staring at me. He had a diamond sword out but was only wearing an iron chestplate over his normal clothes.

"Isn't that a bit much?" I said. "I don't think making something fall is worth being killed for..."

"Then don't make it fall." He said simply.

"…okay…" I raised an eyebrow, then jumped into the lake and jumped back up onto the edge.

"Who are you?" He asked.

I sighed. "I don-"

"I wanted the name Dedrith," he interrupted grumpily. "You just had to take it, didn't you?"

"W… what?"

"I'm Talis, anyway." He continued. "I'm new to the server."

I vaguely remembered Sawyer mentioning someone named Talis at some point, but I didn't really care. "Server?" I asked half-heartedly.

"You know, the server?" A bit of irritation showed in Talis' voice. "The one we're _on?_"

I stared at him blankly. He facepalmed, then dove under the water, disappearing in a hole in the sand. I peered after him but couldn't see anything because of the shadow the platform cast over the water.

I shrugged and walked back to the sandstone road. I squinted and looked out over the distance but couldn't see anything except the road stretching on and on and on.

_It's better than staying here,_ I reasoned. _Even if Sawyer's base isn't over there._

I looked in my bag to make sure my TNT was still there and started walking.

* * *

**_The giant golden cup is the holy grail, the sandstone road is the yellow brick road, the hot tub is a hot tub, and the double rainbow... is a double rainbow. X3 The "gravity troubles" were caused by TNT, by the way. Expect the next chapter soon. :) Thanks for all the reviews._**


	9. We're Off To Grief The Admin

I was _really _glad the temperature never changed in this world.

I'd been walking down the sandstone road for hours without a single change in scenery besides the few landmarks fading in the distance behind me. The sun seemed unreasonably bright but I didn't mind it without the expected blistering desert heat.

The sun started to set, and I desperately looked around for somewhere to hide.

Nothing. Not even a hill.

I ran a few blocks off the road and dug straight down, figuring I could barricade myself in a hole for a night. I had torches and wood to fill the top with, why not?

I dug one square down and saw a torch flickering directly under me. I blinked to make sure I wasn't hallucinating or anything. And then I fell.

It was only about a five-square drop but it hurt anyway. I got up and looked around.

I was in a small enclosed chamber, about 5 by 5 blocks. The walls were cobblestone and the floor was some sort of moss-covered cobblestone. In the middle there was a block that looked like a cage with a tiny rotating pig inside of it. There was a torch right next to it.

Three people stood at the opposite end of the room from me. They turned and looked at me.

A few seconds of silence passed and I looked up and filled the hole in the roof with wooden planks, just to do something.

"Oh hey, you're that guy…" The person on the left said.

"That's really specific," the one in the middle scoffed.

"Erby, Talis, just shut the fucking hell up!" the one on the right yelled.

"Geez, Mike, calm the heck down," Talis mumbled.

"What are you guys doing here?" I asked.

"Could ask you the same thing," Talis said quietly, but Mike interrupted.

"We're mining a tunnel to Sawyer's base and ran into this dungeon. The first fucking time I find one and I have to share the loot with two noobs," He grumbled.

Jacob grinned. "I has golden apple."

I raised an eyebrow and decided not to question what in the world a dungeon or a golden apple was. "Why are you mining to Sawyer's base?"

"Payback," Talis immediately replied, smirking.

"Me too. He blew up my house," I said. "What'd he do to you?"

"He called me stupid," Erby whined.

"He said I was cold-hearted," Talis said, sounding like he couldn't care less.

"I'm sensing a parody here," I mused, turning to Mike. "Let me guess, he called you a wimp?"

"Fuck no!" Mike scoffed. "He stole my shitload of obsidian. I'm pissed off that he always takes my fuckin stuff even though he can spawn anything he wants."

"… Interesting," I said. "Well, anyway, there's a road that leads to his base right above us. We could just take that."

"Then he'd see us, though." Talis said.

"Actually, Sawyer told me he was going to be off building a huge, epic fountain for the next few days." Erby said.

"IT TOOK YOU THIS LONG TO FUCKING TELL US?" Mike screamed.

"Yeah, I have a short attention span," He replied casually, then looked towards the mossy floor. "Ooh, a beetle!"

Talis facepalmed. "Well, it's night right now, anyway, so we can't travel aboveground."

I reached up and punched out my wooden planks. Sunlight filtered in. "Actually, it's day now."

"Of course, we spent so much time fucking talking that night wanted to get the hell out of here as soon as possible," Mike said, moving towards the hole in the ceiling, revealing a very long and even tunnel behind him. He started punching out stairs up in the sand. "We'll have to cover this when we're out, or at least fill it with lava." He grinned evilly.

"Wow, a sentence without you cussing. Of course it had to be replaced with malice," I said. "I'm for just covering it, all in favor?"

Talis yawned, seeming to not have heard, and Erby looked up. "I… I kind of like lava…"

I narrowed my eyes. "We're covering it."

Mike jumped up the stairs and moved out of the way for everyone to follow. When everyone was out I filled in the exposed holes with sand until it was even with the ground around it.

We started walking down the road in silence, with Erby and Talis next to me and Mike on the other side of Talis. We walked on for about a minute with the thudding of our feet being the only sound.

"… want to talk?" Erby asked meekly.

"No," Everyone answered.

"… wanna sing?"

"No."

"…wanna hold hands and skip-"

"NO."

Erby frowned and lowered his head. A few more moments of silence passed as we walked on.

"Now if only we had a terrier," Talis muttered.


	10. It's A Trap!

"I think I see something," Talis said.

Off in the distance, there was a faint greenish blur. We walked closer and closer and it took shape. Lime green towers with rounded tops formed an odd collection of spires at the end of the road. Well, technically not at the end of the road. They were all on a giant platform floating in the sky. There was a small wooden tower with a ladder leading up to it at the end of the road.

"Is that his castle?" I asked.

"Yeah," Mike said. "Fucking amazing, isn't it?"

"Why is it made of wool?" Talis asked. "A bit too easily flammable, isn't it?"

"All the better for us," I grinned.

"That's too easy," Erby said. "What I want to do is set a lava trap for him."

"How would that work?" I asked.

"Lava, when placed with a bucket, flows to the closest ledge, and redirects its flow whenever the block next to it is updated, or messed with. We could set up a platform or basin above his doorway with a hole away from his door, with a block directly under it, and then place lava next to it. It would flow into the hole. Then we could make another hole in the platform, at least two blocks away from the lava, directly above Sawyer's doorway and without a block under it, and connect redstone wire to the block next to the lava and to a pressure plate in Sawyer's doorway. The redstone being activated would count as the block being updated, and next time Sawyer came in, the lava would switch directions, pour onto him, and burn down his castle."

Everyone had stopped with their jaws hanging open and eyes wide.

"That's brilliant," I said. "You're not stupid…"

"I ARE SMART!" Erby exclaimed. "Can I has diamond?"

"Okay, nevermind, you are," I said. "But still, great idea. We should do that. Anyone got any lava?"

"Three fuckin buckets," Mike grinned.

"And I have redstone," I said. "And it's easy enough to make a pressure plate. This will be awesome."

We started walking again, and the castle came closer and closer with every step.

"… I wanted to blow something up," Talis muttered.

"You can blow up his bathroom," Mike said, handing some TNT to Talis. "It's made of stone, so it won't burn like the rest of his fucking base."

"Sweet," Talis said, shoving the TNT in his pocket.

We walked the rest of the way to the way up and climbed up the ladder. It led at least 40 blocks into the air. A couple of zombies and a skeleton pooled out from the massive shadow under the castle and crowded around the bottom of the ladder, seeming not to care about the flames that engulfed them.

We climbed onto the castle and looked around. It was amazing. There was a hot tub room, a lounge, a library, a pool, and a large, open room with a glass platform that Mike called a Spleef arena.

Then we got to work, and started setting up the platform. The floor in the entrance room was stone, so I took some stone from Sawyer's chests and made a stone pressure plate that was almost impossible to detect on the floor.

Talis thought it wouldn't be as fun to detonate the TNT in Sawyer's bathroom now, or to have to detonate it when the castle burned, so he stole more redstone wire and a few redstone repeaters from Sawyer's chests and hooked up the pressure plate to the TNT as well.

After everything was in place and well hidden, we jumped over the pressure plate and climbed down the ladder.

We went behind Sawyer's base, narrowly avoiding all the zombies and such, and traveled until we found a small hill in the sand, where we hollowed out a lookout point and made a ceiling out of sandstone. On the side of the wall facing Sawyer's base, we made a glass wall.

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

"Fuck this, I'm going home," Mike grumbled, and punched a hole in the glass to walk through.

"Sawyer's taking too long," Talis said, following.

"I gotta farm waiting," Erby said.

"Don't you want to see it?" I asked.

"Eh. It would be cool to see, but I'm fine with Sawyer dying."

"Hmm… Yeah, I guess I'll go too." _No point waiting for the inevitable._

We walked back to the front of sawyer's base, after destroying all the glass in the lookout and filling it with sand, and started walking back down the sandstone road.

I saw a figure in the distance.

"Guys, look! A pony!" Erby yelled.

"No, that's Sawyer," I said, squinting my eyes. "… crap."

"Fuck!" Mike yelled, running off the path and digging a hole straight down. He just happened to be over the 'dungeon' they were in earlier.

Everyone jumped in and filled in the hole with sand.

"Well… should we wait until he passes and _then _watch?" I asked, grinning.

"Yeah, that sounds good," Talis shrugged.

We waited until we heard Sawyer's footsteps pass, and, after a few moments, dug out and watched him walk towards his castle.

He climbed up the ladder and started walking across the small platform to the front door. He froze right in front of it.

I waited a moment in confusion. "… Does he know it's there?" I tried to say, but nothing came out. I wasn't even sure my mouth moved.

Then everything went black.

* * *

_**I was planning to make this longer but separated it into ****two chapters.**_

**_BTW, thanks for the reviewer who said Erby was like Bailey. I looked up good grief and watched it- freakin hilarious. _**

**_"Guys, look, a pony!" I felt I just had to put a reference to Bailey in there. x3_**


	11. New Games

I was floating… no, falling… into a world of endless blue.

_The Void_, my mind supplied.

There was no end, no exit, nothing to hold onto, nothing to see- _anywhere._

_Am I going to be trapped here?_

Then the world suddenly appeared. I suddenly stopped falling about an inch above the surface and, very slowly, floated down until my feet touched.

The world almost looked like it was loading. Bit after bit… _chunk after chunk_… It came into focus.

I was in a plain field, almost like a savannah, but with greener grass. There was a forest off to the left- or east- and an ocean and beach to the west and north. To the south was a desert, nowhere near as endless and plain as the one around Sawyer's castle had been, as it was littered with mountains and cacti.

It was completely unfamiliar.

I looked around. Erby, Talis, Mike, Sawyer, and a few other people who I'd never seen before were there, looking around.

"Uhhh…" I was the first one to speak. "What just happened?"

"I restarted the server," Sawyer said. "It's been fucking forever since I did, and two patches have come out."

I was about to ask what a server and what a patch was, but Talis cut in. "What's new?"

"Mainly, dogs and weather." Sawyer stated.

Erby smiled. "So, you didn't know about the la-" I roughly elbowed him in the ribs, and he fell over, whining.

"What?" Sawyer asked.

"The lovely house we made!" I made up on the spot, grinning. "We were going to show it to you. So… uh… what does restarting the server mean?"

"Everything's fuckin gone, and we get to start new." Mike butted in.

"Oh, by the way," Sawyer said, turning to Talis. "You're admin now."

"…what?"

"Yeah, I got tired of it," Sawyer yawned. "So, yeah. Anything you want to do? Lay down server rules, or something?"

"Everyone's OP," Talis smiled.

Erby grinned, and a golden apple appeared in front of him. "Shiny."

"What? OP?" I asked.

"You can spawn anything you want."

"What, like, wood?" As soon as I said it, wood appeared in front of me.

"Yeah, like that. Anything, really. Build something. Go crazy, I don't care. Just don't blow up my stuff, or you're banned." Talis grinned.

I heard barking, and turned toward the sound. In the forest, a dog- or wolf, or something- was darting in and out of the trees.

"Wow, fucking lucky! First time on the new server and we see wolves!" Sawyer said, and a few bones appeared in front of him. He picked them up and ran toward the dogs with a bone in hand, yelling, "I'm going to name him Toto!"

"I was gunna do that," Erby whined, still on the ground.

"This is a very weird place…" I muttered to myself.

"Get fuckin used to it," Mike said. "Don't like it, don't play."

"Wha-"

"And learn to take a joke. Sawyer didn't blow up your fuckin excuse for a base, I did." He grinned.

"WHAT?"

"Calm down. No big deal. It's fuckin gone now, anyway. Wasn't anything good, either. Like I said, get used to it. _It's just a game._" With that, he walked off.

My mouth hung open. "…what?"

Erby got up. "Heheh. Ima go make an epic base." He ran off toward the sea.

Talis laughed. "Like Mike said, no big deal. That house was crap, anyway. Now you can build something amazing. Out of obsidian. I'd advise that, since those guys just can't stop griefing." He glanced over at Sawyer, who had given up on trying to tame the dog and was whacking it with a bone. "I'd also advise putting your dogs somewhere safe, if you ever get any." He walked off to the desert.

One of the people I had never seen before looked at me. "Uh, hi, I'm Scott. I'm new to the server… uh… how do you play this game again?"

"Honestly… no idea." I muttered.

Another guy walked up to me. "Don't worry, I got this." He looked at Scott. "Hi, I'm Ben. Now, you use the WASD keys to move…"

He trailed off into a very confusing conversation about clicking, mice, and keys that I couldn't follow.

I ignored them and turned around. _So, apparently I can build anything I want now… _I looked at the ground. _I wonder what's at the bottom of the world… and if I could reach it. _I thought it mostly as a joke, but then seriously wondered. _Could I?_ Stone, obsidian, and a diamond pickaxe generated in front of me. I grabbed it and grinned. _Let's find out._

* * *

"Welcome to The Vault!"

I gave my customary, yet genuine, greeting as some newbies entered my little shelter.

Or _big _shelter.

I'd heard about another _game _from some of the people here, and it sounded fairly interesting. So I recreated one of the major key places in the game, or at least in the beginning.

It was a HUGE underground community, you could say, and almost built like a griefing/newbie shelter. I'd heard that word, newbie, from someone here, too. There were two layers of obsidian behind every stone wall, so that no one could get in, or out, or burn, or blow up the place.

Of course, there were front doors, so people could get in and out. But only if I said so. They were iron, with redstone leading to a lever in my office. Hooray for repeaters.

There were many, many rooms, and all shared at least two separate single beds and a chest for storage. There was a Vault storage room, a Vault kitchen, an underground farm, and a meal hall. There was even a bakery.

There were lots of other rooms, I couldn't even remember their names or purposes. If you weren't attentive, you could get lost and have to ask for directions.

The 'server' had expanded and gone public, and newbies were coming in by the truckloads every day. The Vault was just a place for them to be safe while they learned the basics and started a house of their own.

It was originally called Vault 101, which was a good name for a newbie shelter, but The Vault was catchier, and so it became.

Some people stayed at The Vault even after they were newbies, and even some veterans lived here. It had grown quite a reputation. Even Talis had acknowledged it, and placed a sign near the door that said 'Grief= Ban'. Mike and Sawyer had tried to grief it, but they couldn't get past the security guards, namely Scott, Ben, and Erby. Erby was only in security because patrolling would keep him too busy to mess up other things.

I guided the two newbies to their room and told them the basics of the 'game', their Vault schedule, and of being an OP. Then I went toward my office.

I saw the familiar sign, 'OVERSEER'S OFFICE', and noticed the iron door had closed. _Of course, the item disappears after five minutes._ I walked into the Vault Storage, which, luckily, was still open, and walked across the wooden plank floor in a certain pattern, left two, forward three, then dropped one single wooden plank. I turned around and headed out the door, and went through the now open door to my office.

Hooray for wooden pressure plates.

My office had a small private garden, a desk, a chair, a kennel with nearly thirty dogs in it, most of them belonging to the security guards, and a security center that had levers leading to nearly every iron door in the vault.

Erby walked in. "Overseer, we killed Mike and Sawyer again! It was awesome, they were like, arg, and we were like, go away, and then they fell into the Incinterator. We own."

"Nice, Erby," I chuckled. "Now go patrol northern tunnels."

"Yes, sir!" Erby gave a cliché salute and walked out.

The vault entrance was fairly close to the spawn point, so I could hear Sawyer and Mike screaming in anger. I didn't get why they got so angry over not being able to grief us. They needed to get over it.

I can't imagine what I would do if they actually _did _grief The Vault. After all, The Vault was my life. But it _did_ work more like a fun game than anything else.

_Then again, life's a game, _I shrugged. _And people seem to take that pretty seriously._

* * *

_**I'm not sure if this is the end or the beginning. XD ugh, cliches. **  
_


End file.
